My blog never gets more traffic than it does in the last week of December…right before many college application deadlines. If you’re a last-minute applicant and could use a little encouragement, here’s a past post that might help see you through.
Still working on your applications?
If you’re still working on (or just starting) your college applications, here are five tips from a past post to help you finish strong.
On storytelling
Patti from our Los Angeles office shares this article from the New York times on why storytelling is a skill job-seekers must have in their arsenal these days. We read it with interest because we’ve spent 15 years advising our Collegewise students to do exactly the same thing in their college applications. If you’re working on your stories, here are two past posts, here and here, that might help.
First progress, then perfection
Most days, I’m able to write just one blog entry. But when I’m preparing for a vacation, I’m always able to write 7-10 posts ahead of time and queue them to post daily while I’m gone. Why does an impending vacation make me more productive? The rest of the work I have to do and the time I have to do it stays constant (in fact, there’s usually more on my plate to wrap up before I leave). The only thing that changes is the deadline.
Seniors, if you’re still working on your college applications, if your progress is slow and you’ve got writer’s block and you just can’t seem to get through what you need to do, change your deadline. Pretend you need to have everything submitted by Monday. Then work like your hair is on fire to meet that deadline.
You don’t necessarily have to submit what you complete by Monday, and I wouldn’t advise that you trade a quick application for a well-completed one. But before you can find perfection, you’ve got to make progress. And sometimes the best way to do that is to change your deadline.
When more is not better
From Seth Godin’s blog yesterday:
“One thing you’ll discover when you start pan roasting brussel sprouts or tomatoes (or running a theater or an airline, or just about anything for that matter) is that more is not always better.”
The same goes for reach schools, materials with your applications, letters of recommendation, and supporting materials when applying for a job.
More isn’t always better.
The simplest application advice
It’s so important that it bears repeating—when it comes to applications, before you worry about anything else, just follow the directions.
One of our Collegewise counselors who previously worked at a very selective college reminded us this week of the importance of following directions when it comes to how many letters of recommendation to submit. Her school asked for two letters. Here’s what she had to say about that part of the process:
1. The letters were important.
2. They would read two letters and only two letters. A student who sent 3 or 4 or 9 letters? They’d read two of them. And those students had no control over which two would be read.
Don’t decide you have a better way. Follow the application directions, and you can avoid many of the most common application mistakes.
Packaging is for cereal
I’ve often heard students, parents, and some counselors talk about “packaging” a student for college admissions. The thinking is that a student, like a product, needs to be marketed, positioned, and presented in the right way to be compelling to admissions officers. Sometimes the packaging starts long before the application, with discussions about how certain activities, classes, or awards will contribute to a student’s brand.
But the most successful college applicants, the ones who grab the attention of admissions officers and move the readers to lobby for admission, never get that way by strategically packaging themselves. The only packaging they rely on is authenticity.
A student who is genuinely interested in the Civil War asks her teacher to recommend outside reading because she really wants to learn more, not because it can help her build her brand.
A student who loves working at his part-time job at the mall and writes an essay about how he calms down a frustrated customer is presenting an honest slice of his life, not positioning himself to make more of an application impact.
A student who becomes the fearless leader of the math club and proudly tells her college interviewer about the club members’ habit of solving complex equations during lunch isn’t doing that because she’s heard that the college wants more female math majors; she’s doing it because that’s who she is.
Is there an art to application presentation? Absolutely. When a complex human being is reduced to just a few pages of application questions and essay responses, it’s important to use that space to present a clear and compelling picture of who you are and how you’ve spent your time in high school.
But packaging is not the way to do that.
You’re not a product manager hoping for attention in the cereal aisle; you’re a teenager hoping to get into college. Colleges want to get to know the real you, not some contrived version of you that was designed to artificially impress.
So stop worrying about packaging. Instead, use the space in your applications and essays to clearly and proudly share who you are, what you’ve done in high school, and what you hope to do in college.
The authentic you will always be more interesting—and more likely to get admitted—than the packaged version.
10 application mistakes to avoid
For seniors barreling through the application season, here’s a past post with 10 college application mistakes to avoid.
Does your application team have their assignments?
For seniors working through your college applications, it’s easy to get so wrapped up in the work you have to do to complete them, you forget about the parts of the application that require someone other than yourself to complete them, like:
Writing and sending letters of recommendation
Forwarding official transcripts or secondary school reports
Sending official copies of SAT or ACT scores
If you overlook one of your own tasks, you can probably pull a quick turnaround and get it finished by the deadline. Teachers, counselors, and testing agencies, however, may not.
Run back through your application requirements for each college and double-check which items need to be completed by someone else. Then make sure you’ve made those requests and given the parties everything they need to complete their portions for you.
Make sure each member of your application team has their appropriate assignments. Then you can get back to completing the parts that are totally in your control.
Should you send it?
Breanne in our Irvine, California office shared a nifty graphic from a Tufts admissions blog post entitled, “Should I send it?” It demonstrates visually how infrequently the act of sending unsolicited, extra materials with your application is actually a good thing. I’ll stop short of saying it holds true for every college (my rule is always to follow each college’s explicit directions—if they don’t ask for it, don’t send it), but I love how this graphic pushes students to make every effort to share the necessary information within the application itself before you rely on additional materials.
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